CILIP

Email from CILIP confirming that my revalidation for 2017 has gone through safely. I was successful in my plan to get this done earlier in the year. This reflects both being used to the system and the added pressure of working on a submission for Fellowship.

2017 was a hectic year professionally (though you would not know it from this blog where it has mostly been the Journal Club activity that got written up). I was lucky enough to attend EAHIL for the first time and spoke there on my work on metrics. It was great to go to a wider conference and hear about some of the interesting developments in the use of text and data mining for search. I have a stack of photos of the brutalist Berkeley Library at Trinity College to share at some point.

I learnt a lot about feedback delivering both LibQUAL+ and LibUX representing rather different approaches to hearing from library users. Without wishing to completely dismiss LibQUAL+ I think LibUX is likely to offer a richer forward path. It is so much more flexible, immediate and powerful.

I was lucky enough to learn from inspirational folk on an NHS LKS leadership programme. Not sure I have ever done quite so many tools looking at understanding my style, preferences and so on before. I am not sure I feel very different for it but I do have some more tools and excellent contacts.

Fellowship submission this year!

This years celebratory Mj Hibbett and the [re] Validators number is “Do the indie kid”

Another years CPD (2016) safely logged away and submitted to CILIP for the Revalidation Assessors. Slightly worried that it is almost time to sort out the 2017 log.

Highlights? Talking Metrics at HLG2016 in Scarborough where I got to meet a number of colleagues previously known only from twitter and by their good work. Hearing Sherry Turkle on Reclaiming Conversation with lots of food for thought on how we interact online and in person. I also ended up getting involved with work around evaluation frameworks with Sharon Markless which was a real eye opener.

Definitely need to get the Revalidation done earlier next year as it really is a bit far away for some of it already. Given the lack of blogposts of late I will have some reflecting to do.

This years MJ Hibbett and the Validators tune is Lesson of the Smiths – enjoy!

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It has been a long old struggle but this post covers the current issue of Update and the last of my backlog. The plan is not to let it get out of hand – there is no doubt that a current issue of Update is more interesting than one a year plus old. While not always the most thrilling of publications I have continued to find the odd thing I have not heard about elsewhere and some really helpful brief articles on a wide variety of topics.

The October issue has a timely article on privacy and the Library user. My catch up reading meant I read another article by the same author (Paul Pedley) only the other day. There is a handy list of potential paths to take to work with users around privacy issues.

I have already spoken to colleagues about the article by Wendy Morris on the Big Read at Kingston University. We are currently engaged on a mass reading project and there are valuable ideas here on how to build on the possibilities this offers.

South London colleague Sian Aynsley updates on the KfH Learning Zone. I heard a verbal update on this at #NHSHE2016 so this is more a reconfirmation of details of this helpful resource.

Finally in this issue I enjoyed reading about the experience of Sue Willis on the Libraries Taskforce. It is fascinating to have a glimpse at this task of influencing within government. The importance of adjusting communication styles to suit audience was an obvious take away.

And finally – May 2015!

I had already seen the Design Thinking for Libraries toolkit but this is well worth a look if you are interested in user experience and design thinking. There is a free book with all sorts of tips and ideas on how to learn more about users. I will probably read this again ahead of a project I am managing to use external consultants to help with this at work.

Finally there is an article explaining obligatory revalidation – sadly it didn’t make the case strongly enough to get it past the members!

I have pondered applying for Cilip Fellowship a few times. The latest provocation was the realisation that under the old revalidation scheme the third round would have made me a Fellow. I appreciate the new scheme is less of a job than the old one but the discipline of revalidating made me very aware of the range of development I have completed over the years. Generally I have been put off by the slightly minimalist guidance available on the process. I have also been busy learning about life in HE and completing the AKC (final year of this at present).

A timely event organised by Cilip in London in October helped quell some of my doubts about the process. Hail Fellow well met brought together potential fellowship candidates, those already in process, some Fellows and those involved on the assessment side. While there were some useful materials available it was predominantly the opportunity to have a conversation with those who understood the nature of the process that made the difference. There are alos a good few people I know on Twitter who are engaged in the process at present so I have a ready made community to discuss things with.

I had mooted starting the process next year to my boss but have ended up plumping for just getting on with it so there will be a bit of Fellowship commentary on here in the coming months. In the first instance I am all registered, have found a mentor and found a copy of the portfolio book in the work ebook collection (the paper copy is not on the shelf and not issued – tut). Anyone know where I left my CV?

A few thoughts while #HLG2016 remains fresh in the mind. Hopefully there will be a good number of reflections shared in the coming days (Abi Alayo has been quick off the mark with her thorough posts for the first and second day. I am likely to be less thorough!

The conference had a packed agenda but it is the window to talk to so many colleagues that really makes it. This started ahead of time on twitter with the depth of adoption of this channel continuing to grow (NodeXL analysis of patterns of use, language and so on). The journey up offered time for initial conversations and the world was partially set to rights with Ben Skinner on a later than hoped for train from York. One of the topics was around the challenge of liberating the data that we hold and need to use (more on this in another post).

Safely arrived at the Royal there was time to help some guy push his slush puppy cart into an arcade and to buy three pints and half a coke for £7.70 (Seven pounds seventy pence London pub drinkers vidiprinter) down on the harbour side.

The next morning started with the pleasure of finally meeting Michael Cook after years of being in contact online. Running along the sea front was a great way to open the day and to get a feel for the fog. This was one of at least a couple of semi organised runs by delegates and it would be a nice thing to continue at future events.

The conference venue was the Scarborough Spa which had a slightly faded glamour but met our needs overall (the wifi worked!). The shifted date was less successful with the Higher Education contingent clearly reduced due to student inductions already being underway or looming.

There was a strong Knowledge for Healthcare theme throughout the two days which may have been off putting for some. This is balanced to some extent by the extent to which the products of KfH workstreams are publicly available and often widely applicable. The volume and quality of work going on is impressive with tool kits in all directions. Work on increasing the role of centralised procurement rang some alarm bells for me – we have moved from £2mill spent centrally to £4mill but the view is that some £12mill could be spent this way. That money is unlikely to be new money! Efforts to look to the future of staffing are also welcome with another leadership programme and a development path for senior managers on the way. I suspect there are non NHS health folk on the current leadership programme and I really hope so as it is important to get a wider perspective where possible.

I forget how long it is since the introduction of “Do once and share” but duplication of effort remains stubbornly persistent. The work on Current Awareness illustrated this clearly with over 700 bulletins under production just from the people who responded to a survey on this. Approaches around consolidating these while establishing best of breed models feels overdue. The guideline on good bulletin production will be one to watch for.

My own session on metrics drew a larger crowd than I had hoped for with pretty much a full room. It brought home to me the need for additional efforts to explain how the principles we developed for good metrics can be applied. In a similar way to the CAS bulletins I could see the germ of a plan to develop best of breed metrics based around shared templates. There was some confusion over whether this was an additional piece of work or a replacement for national statistics returns. In essence I hope the principles will be used as part of the national statistics review to inform any changes. What I hope I expressed strongly during the talk was that the interest in metrics is mostly the extent to which they can drive useful conversations – with our stakeholders and with each other. Through out the conference we were reminded of the importance of being active in the boardroom as well as at the bedside. Having something concrete to talk about that responds to the priorities of senior stakeholders must be a good thing. I will make some tweaked slides for the web and blog them in the next few days.

After the rush of presenting we then had a fun conference dinner from which I may have escaped with slightly too much CILIP HLG rock!

A pair of keynotes kicked us off well on the second day with Nick Poole running through progress at CILIP and recognising the impact of health library and information professionals work. I hope the new model for subscriptions and improving offer will have the desired effect to widen participation and membership. This was followed by a moving talk from Lynn Daniel on the Expert Patient Programme. While I am sure I was not alone in wondering about the evidence base for some of the interventions proposed it was clear that her work has considerable impact on peoples lives with access to information at the heart of it.

The expert work of Judy Wright in supporting research proposals was fascinating and highly relevant to some of the thinking I am doing about search support for my own organisation. This along with a number of discussions I had made we wonder a little as to how up to scratch our skills are in these areas. While there are some seriously well equipped librarians out there I certainly feel that I know less about systematic review and other advanced searching than I would like. As we shift to delivering more highly specialist work and automation advances we need to ensure that we can maintain credibility. More thoughts on this to come in another blog post.

Other useful talks were Jo Milton from Cambridge on UX work (experience sharing planned for the future) and Andrew Brown looking at RoI. The RoI work confirmed how hard this is to do well and the risks associated with starting to move into the realm of putting a price on all things.

HLG committee were keen to hear about ideas for what else we might do. The potential for holding HLG Conference annually was suggested. I wonder whether we might run something like the UKSG one day event which combines a trade fair with a selection of talks? A notable difference is that this is a free event to attend. We could look to make the overall cost lower (no lunch unless a sponsor covers?) to allow this. I would also like to see HLG campaign with members to increase uptake of revalidation. The concept of regular revalidation is understood and undertaken by many of those we work closely with. HLG can lead the way on raising use of this method and normalising it across the profession.

We emerged from the fog as the train whisked us off home. This felt like an important conference and reminded me how much I love working in the health information community. There is no doubt that significant progress is being made across many areas of work. There is also no doubt that financial pressure is going to be intense for most of us. The call to engage with NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans, with the patient information agenda and with making the future we want to be part of has to be heeded.

Thought I would have a change from reading about the chaos being unleashed by the EURef and flip through the latest from CILIP (and from them a year back).

June 2016 first.

Bit surprised that the consultation on the new membership model is given just a small news item. This seems a pretty big deal to me. The new lower price is likely to be welcomed by many. I wonder how strong the maths is on the number of people likely to take up the “leaders” option and how convincing the package of extra benefits is? There will definitely need to be some strong recruitment of members.

Positive to hear how the Library at Ferguson supported the community following the shooting of Michael Brown.

Even more positive is the column by Dawn Finch as President on the importance of ethical principles in the profession. I have been disappointed again by the decision of HLG to suggest conference sponsors should influence the content of the event. For me this falls foul of the 7th principle

Meanwhile back in 2015 when we had some semblance of order in UK politics.. Michael Gove was scrapping the book ban in prisons.

I really should have checked out the Impact Toolkit (launched in this issue) by now. Glad to see Mary Dunne was involved – she spoke really well at HLG 2014 in Oxford.

Over the page is David Gurteen on Knowledge Cafes. I attended one a few years back at the BDA but found it a bit overwhelming with numbers involved that day. The focus on conversation is really helpful as we work on driving engagement at work. A reference is lacking for the Zeldin book on Conversation which I recommend to all as a quick but worthwhile read. I am very keen on the idea of conversation needing to take place in the physical world – definitely more benefit for me. The more I can talk to people the better things go.

Interesting to read of efforts at Plymouth to provide core reading material as e-textbooks for undergrads. It would be interesting to know how strong the actual usage was – a drop in paper circ for purchased titles was mentioned which you would expect. The preceding article on ebooks was a handy reminder of a few issues and options as I look at what I can do for my NHS users.

May leads on Shakespeare which is understandable given current celebrations (there are just a few days left to see the King’s College London “By Me William Shakespeare” with collaboration by the National Archives and the London Shakespeare Centre.

An exhibition with a few more days to run is “Scholar, courtier, magician: the lost library of John Dee”. It was great to read such a clear explanation of how this had been put together and the pleasures / pains of it all. @girlinthe had already been giving us a good flavour and this is a good example of how social media can get people involved in something well ahead of time. I need to be sure to go before it closes in July.

The other main articles of note for me were about collaboration in health. The work of Macmillan with Glasgow Public Libraries demonstrates the importance of specialist information support within a more general service. Meanwhile work in the Wirral links an NHS library with public libraries to support reminiscence therapy provides shows a new service being created with powerful effects. Both of these illustrate the debate around how NHS LKS should work with patients and the public. I understand the unwillingness of NHS services to open entirely to the public – the services required are very different and difficult conversations need the right preparation / conditions. I need to make the connections into the relevant services locally to see what we can do.

Nothing massively spoke to me in the September issue – these things happen. Glad to see the progress of works at the Glasgow School of Art.